Was Oblivion as good as I remember? - My analysis after an 8 year hiatus

recently I've found myself wondering about Skyrim's longevity in the video game scene it's an old joke at this point but here we are in 2018 and Skyrim is still something I see pop up into my various feeds pretty frequently it's rather odd to me considering that every time a new and better version of Skyrim is announced all I hear and see are memes jokes and general complaining about the decision to release yet another adaptation of everyone's favorite 2011 masterpiece it's gotten to the point where I found myself thinking about the game that was released before Skyrim not that one no almost there that's the one well close enough yes oblivion while not my very first Elder Scrolls game it's definitely the one that I sent the most time into and the one that I remember most fondly watching the amount of love that Skyrim gets from Bethesda which may or may not be because of the money it brings in got me wondering if I've been holding oblivion on a higher pedestal due to nostalgia or if it was really as good as I remembered it being after all the last time I really played oblivion was about eight years ago before Skyrim's first release so I downloaded oblivion in its unmod at state and began to play through the game with a fresh perspective I realized this is a twelve year old game now so I'm not really going to rag on its various bugs or graphics too much but I will be basing my analysis on how much fun I have overall with the game and its quest lines and present my evaluation based off of my own feelings and standards for how things should or shouldn't play out I will not be including the Shivering Isles because my script is already 12 pages long without it just know that the Shivering Isles are very fun in a welcome addition to the game let's take it from the top you have zero idea how much this Sun excites me anyways he's starting to sell because every Elder Scrolls game needs you to be a prisoner except Daggerfall Emperor needs to use the secret escape tunnel that's hidden in your cell for some reason and then realizes you're pretty cool you are the one from my dreams so you tutorial your way through the sewers and wind up making your class after watching the Emperor dive before your own eyes even for its time this is a pretty cookie-cutter start as far as beginnings go but the class creation is actually where my interest in the game started to pick up again I love this type of character creation and I miss it in a lot of modern-day action RPGs it's a very old school pen and paper type of creation where I can make something semi unique while still being able to train and dabble and all the other skills on list I will say it's not perfect in my opinion I think not getting any XP for leveling minor skills isn't a good mechanic but I also think that if the minor skills did give XP then seven major skills would be too many the problem here is that it takes 10 increases in any major skill to level up and I could go on about this system for a long time so let's just move on from it after crawling to the sewers and being bombarded with a thousand quests you're now free to go wherever you please I started with trying to work my way into the blades this entire part of the quest line was never memorable to me I vaguely recalled the bit about Marten being the son of the king but I did remember kibosh pretty well after all it's where the first gate to oblivion is located these hell portals still do an amazing job of creeping me out in a way that I did not expect it's really a testament to how well the concept of oblivion gates were done in this game when I'm expecting the gate to be there and it still sends shivers down my spine that's an extremely well-done experience I mean think about it these gates could have easily been shrines or pedestals that have no weather or sound effects you touch them and then you just returns brought it into hell and that's the experience instead you're traveling around Serie Dell and suddenly the sky goes and this massive red portal is looming in the middle of the woods and you were just looking for a bear cave for your bear quest and now you're wondering how this all went wrong this kind of experience is something that's extraordinarily unique to oblivion and I very much loved the emotion that the outside of these portals evoke the inside of them is a different story yes walking into your first portal is a pretty awesome experience the contrast between the hellish wastes of oblivion is a tremendous leap from syrtos rolling hills and flowing rivers but the actual gameplay experience is lackluster at best once you get over the change in scenery oblivion gates become one of the most stale and boring challenges in the entire game the randomly appearing gates come in seven different variations but all of them have the same flavor of giving you the runaround treatment while you try your damnedest to make it to the sigil stone and close the portal here's a breakdown of one of the gates that I did clear alright you start with these three towers to choose from one the closed off by labo so choose one of the other two both are wrong walk in and admire the blazing fire and body rain head upstairs fighting off various roving gangs of Darth Maul's until you make it to this bridge that makes it easier to get to the ground reload your save go back inside and go up more stairs until you get to the blood then wait for an hour negating the usefulness of the blood fountain go up more winding ramps until you get to the top where you meet the toughest enemy in the entire game this Triceratops you then pull this lever and ask yourself where's the other lever spoiler alert the other tower so you make your way back down one world trade center and across to its twin in the hopes that the lever is for some reason at the entrance it isn't it's just another charging chuck and it's patentability of jumping in the air and clapping 3/4 of your health away continue up and come to the realization that a German engineer is laced this tower with bouncing Betties and continue to match T in the hopes that enemies won't be nearby make your way all the way up this tower pull the lever go out the door just in time to watch the bridge retracting and wonder if you did this whole thing wrong tell yourself you didn't to help yourself feel better and then hop down to the new tower buy more demons finally defeat this guy and take the dark sign from the altar immediately regret standing too close to the erupting volcano this time secure the dark matter and back a safe ten feet away from the Sunbeam weep gently as you realize that you need to do this seven more times if you want to complete the Allies for Bruma quest I realize they tend to blow things out of proportion but I really don't know how else to stress that I spent around 40 minutes doing the same thing multiple times I don't mind if I spend 40 minutes doing something that's unique and fine and keeps my interest I do mind it when I get done with a quest and I look at the clock and I go wow I spent a lot of time on that it sucks because on one hand I do enjoy the idea that all hell is literally breaking loose but that joy is soured when I remember what it's like to clear one of these many many gates it's the patented Bethesda maneuver of quantity over quality that's later echoed in Skyrim and fallout for his radiant quest systems I'd have loved it if there were nine oblivion gates representative of the nine circles of hell or something similar to that sentiment but the trade-off there would be the lack of gates resulting in the world feeling a lot less invaded but let's move away from that let's talk about guilds guilds and Oblivion where my absolute favorite part of the game when I played through it before so naturally when I began to replay the game it wasn't long before I strayed from the main quest line to start delving into the various guilds that I found in serie dill my first guild of choice was the arena which I honestly didn't have high expectations for I remember it being a big fighting pit and that's about it after my initiation of being told that I was going to die about twenty different ways you what you all right it's your funeral when you're ready to get eviscerated just head up the ramp to the arena I began to ascend the ranks and surprisingly I was having a blast the daunting almost eerie blood-soaked hallway that leads up from the Red Room was something I hadn't appreciated before and even though the crowds were sparse due to graphical limitations I absolutely loved it and I didn't realize it immediately but I eventually remembered that the arena was usually something that I didn't mess with until I was much more geared going into it with a lower level in a small Arsenal made the arena a lot more challenging to tackle than I remembered it being it got to the point where I was chugging potions and backing off a lot to try to win but when I did win it really felt like I had accomplished something plus the stats I was leveling was a nice bonus after I had made a fair amount of progress in the arena I moved on to the Thieves Guild this was another guild that I had very fond memories for and was pretty excited about starting it in order to become initiated in the guild though you have to bribe or persuade your way into the good graces of a beggar this is where the persuasion minigame comes into play I remembered the mini game existing but I didn't remember the full extent of its frequency until I started doing thieves guild quests if you want information persuasion if you want to convince someone to believe you persuasion if you want better prices for the stuff you steal you guessed it persuasion the mini game isn't inherently awful but it does get tedious when every person requires persuading it's something that I'm happy about being removed in Skyrim after you get initiated into the guild you're doyon tells you to steal things that's it and it's wonderful you make your own klepto maniacal missions casing the joints that you want to hit waiting until nightfall and pilfering the riches of everyone in the merchant district I had a lot of fun with this and easily made a thousand plus gold overnight it was so easy that I was a bit let down by the special mission requirements you see in order to advance in the guild you have to do missions that only unlock after you've fenced a certain amount of gold's worth of items the first mission requires 50 the second is a hundred and then the increments increase a hundred at a time excluding 900 until you get to the final mission of the Thieves Guild which requires a thousand gold worth of items fenced I understand that I can continue to rob places as I deemed fit but it really takes the wind out of my sails when I blow through the entirety of the special mission requirements after hitting two shops in the same night it's a minor complaint but I feel like it was worth noting now as far as the actual Thieves Guild special missions go I did have a bit of fun with them but not as much as I remembered having when I first played sure I enjoyed planting evidence on a double crosser in the guild and busting into the arcane university to manipulate them into helping out but I kept hoping for more unique endeavors to crop up the first two-thirds of these missions consists of playing pranks on hieronymus Lex and obtaining random items for people this is outrageous the gray fox had a hand in this I know it after all these years he's finally one after a while you finally get to meet the man in charge the gray fox now I played this game when I was a lot younger and I remember the gray fox being a cool and mysterious vigilante who I really liked as a character but when I finally encountered him he was a bit more underwhelming than I recalled and if I'm going to be completely honest the mask looks a bit ridiculous but either way he proceeds to give you a mission to retrieve a particular stone at a temple the blind monks in the catacombs guard the stone okay okay I'll show you but only because you are my dear friend please be discreet and don't bother the other monks which leads into a sprawling underground cave let's take a time out here to talk about the cave systems in this game they aren't good they're boring they're uninspired they make me sigh and mash forward as fast as I can to get them over with I understand that they're required in games like these I don't just dislike caves I do dislike oblivion games every cave in this game seems to me like some kind of generic copy and pasted layout of mediocrity and the only thing that separates these caves from me are how much I'm invested in whichever quest I'm on this guy wants me to retrieve a ruby dagger that slowly drains my life and causes my vision to go black and white because the ghost of a famous vampire is haunting him after he desecrated his grave point me to the cave I'm doing this thing gladly some peasant wants me to save his prego daughter at the center of a cave I'll pay you for a new daughter because I really don't want to go into that boring cave now all that being said the last missions for the Thieves Guild were a lot more thought-out first I had to retrieve an arrow from a grotto which housed a giant underwater boss and led to a wizard tower I was a bit aggravated at first when I saw the hidden entrance and a castle led to a cave system but this one was actually quite a bit of fun to sneak around and explore next I had to retrieve some boots that were in a cave but it was a small cave so no big deal the boots of spring-heeled Jack was actually one of my favourite quests so far just because of the misdirection he shaked down an Earl who's supposed to be a descendant of spring-heeled Jack who then directs you to a cave that's under house and once you find the coffin there's only a diary after thumbing through this diary you find out that the man who wrote it was a vampire who lived for decades and decades when you finally get to the end you find out that the Earl that you shook down is Springhill Jack that's the kind of cave narrative I can get behind finally you're given your final mission to go through a catacomb system and solve some mysteries and stuff I don't know this mission felt really underwhelming to me your task was stealing an Elder Scroll which is an awesome heist to pull off and while the catacombs did feel a bit more unique as far as the layout when they also felt very much the same you're inside a dark grayish dungeon with the same aesthetics and type of undead enemies I actually had a lot more fun sneaking through the Imperial Palace in the library where the scroll was housed than the catacombs I know I tend to gripe a lot about small things but I really felt like the mission involving as security of an elder scroll the thing that these games are prefaced with should have been something really unique and inspired I'm talking a gigantic sprawling library with moving bookshelves and automated Knights that Patrol I'm talking trapped rooms that players have to skirt or figure out ahead of time via clues stuff like that you know maybe I'm too picky but either way after you steal the scroll and escape you make your way back to the gray fox who Pat's you on the back and asks you for one final favor I don't want to go into an extraordinary amount of detail but the mission ends with you becoming the grey fox but the elderscrolls magic used to lift the curse that comes with the titles hood it's a cool ending to the story of the Thieves Guild but I definitely feel like that it could have been executed a little better the story is a little too convenient for my tastes and overlooks quite a few things either way it's hard not to feel a sense of accomplishment when you retired to the guild hall and look through the things that you helped achieve after my excursion through the Thieves Guild I made the executive decision of killing an innocent person which is an amazing requirement to be contacted by a representative of the Dark Brotherhood Rufio kill him and your initiation into the Dark Brotherhood will be complete after this contact occurred my string of intricate assassinations began this was the only guild in the game where I could not help but do mission after mission one could argue that the quests are nothing more than the usual objectives in the game but it's the flavor of these quests that really enraptured me assassinate a guy and make it look like an accident pretend to kill someone with a poison blade and administer the antidote afterwards a mansion murder party where you're trying to kill everyone else without the other guests catching on [Music] these quests breathe so much life into the game for me and the way they're handled is about as good as I can ask of a game especially one from 2006 get any sense Kumar after doing a set amount of missions from the Brotherhood and acquainting yourself with your new family you're promptly ordered by your recruiter to exterminate everyone in your sect of the Brotherhood it's a moment that I hadn't forgotten since I first played oblivion and I completely adored revisiting it upon the completion of this purification you are promoted to a member of the Black Hand and are given several dead drop quests to take care of in which you are directed to notes that are hidden all overseer Adelle I initially thought I wasn't going to enjoy this part as much but the dead drops actually streamlined the game really efficiently and the quest didn't let up and creative ways to kill people the first one involves a necromancer in a cave which sounds super generic until stumble upon his research this research details that he is currently in the process of transferring his lifeforce into an item in the hopes of becoming a Lynch and that if the item is lost from his person he will die and just in case you thought the black can might be doing good things for once your next assassination target is a whole family of people that you were told to exterminate one by one thanks again and have a wonderful stay I felt like a total monster and I loved every second of it the sheer amount of fun that I derived from this quest line made me really begin to take my time and savor these quests I was no longer rushing in to get things done but found myself beginning to role play along with the creative ways of killing people killing a master of hand-to-hand combat with my fists breaking into the house of a merchant to replace all of his food and drink with me that he's allergic to and poisoned apples I was even beginning to search around my victims homes to see if I can glean some sort of information as to why they were being targeted the way that they were all of my targets began to get more paranoid over time a lot of them were expecting fights a lot of them were attacking on sight I had found some black hand robes and a locked keg at one victim's house but I still couldn't quite figure oh no I thought I could get here in time thought I could stop y'all you have been systematically killing off all of the members of the Black Hand it all finally clicked I had been slaying my own comrades without knowing it and now it was time for revenge so you tracked this traitor down to a lighthouse on the outskirts of town and it is absolutely horrifying in the cellar you find dog bodies a sheep body human bodies and body parts strewn everywhere and a head on a plate simply named mother's head I actually cringed in disgust upon seeing this and read every page in the diary that was left behind this is the only time that I have thoroughly flipped through every page in a book in this game or any Elder Scrolls game it's the Journal of an absolute lunatic who saw his mom's have lopped off when he was a child by Lucy and LaChance and so he seeks vengeance both by Framing lucien and by killing the night mother and therefore the dark brotherhood this is so well done every page reads like a horror movie with the psychopath droning on and on and rhymes rants and nonsense i half expected him to be behind me by the time I was done reading it after poring over this journal it's time to formulate a plan with Lucian and extinguished the traitorous Black Hand member [Music] huh but as it turns out you're a bit too slow this part of the story made me realize that I'm the idiot who would shout and go no look I have the journal here it wasn't him because that was my exact reaction and I was waiting for the dialogue option to come up after thinking it over though it makes way more sense to try to determine who's the traitor first and if I would have tried to denounce someone right then chances are that everyone would turn on me he really says a lot about how good a storyline can be in a game like this when you look at the gruesome body of Lucy and strung up on display and feel remorse and disgust realistically this body is just a zombie model that can be found in numeral places in the game but when you attach a good story to it it doesn't need to be a different model to make you feel genuine emotion towards it that you didn't feel before the dark brotherhood concludes with all the members of the black head meeting in the tomb of the night mother upon her summoning she points out that the traitor is still among the black hand to which he reveals himself and begins attacking everyone after he is slayed you are recognized for the work you have done and how dedicated you've been to the black hand becoming the new listener for the guild it's so hard not to gush over this guilds quest line and I know I've done it a lot at this point from start to finish I'm in love with every part of it and I have to say that this shining example isn't followed by any other part of this game or most other Bethesda games in general it's a rare rare example of everything going so right in the game like this I'm happy that I somehow forgot some of the major plot points in it because replaying and rediscovering these quests have been an absolute treat and I hate that a major portion of this game is so drab in comparison you look at everything this quest line does so right and you ask yourself why is it more of the game like this I really cannot stress enough and I feel like this is the epitome of what a game like this should be there are very very few shortcomings for the Dark Brotherhood if any the reason I've included it's so soon in the list of guilds that I'm going on about instead of saving the best for last is to present to everyone my notion of what I think the golden standard of this game should be it's downright hard to play through the other portions of this game and not complain after experiencing the questline speaking of complaining let's move on to the last few guilds here now go and Mesa this help us all the mages guild oblivion is really where the whole experience of walking into a guild with no proper knowledge or qualification stems from as long as you're not a wanted criminal there's a place for you in the guild this is something that's made fun of relatively heavily in Skyrim as well and takes a bit from your immersion when you're playing I walked into a chapter of the mages guild with 38 restoration and approximately jack-shit in every other school of magic I did realize this and started to train up my meek destruction scale from five after receiving my first task but overall this is something that I think morrowind did very well that its sequel didn't a lot of people hated the restrictions placed on the player when you were told that you needed to have a set amount of magical knowledge to proceed with the guild but it honestly made more sense to me from a lore and immersion perspective when it was handled that way but I digress the first seven or so quests in the mages guild in Oblivion was a hodgepodge of menial tasks that almost anybody can do the general theme that kept recurring was that normally you're supposed to undergo tasks that show how amazing you are at whatever school of magic that particular branch of mages guild specializes in this actually would have been a really cool concept if each branch made you show a bit of proficiency in each school and had you perform a test or task based on that knowledge for example illusion could have been a test to see how well you can make it through a maze of enemies by charming them our conjuring could have been having enough knowledge to summon three different familiars and then being able to defeat them as well instead you're met with each branch telling you that their respective worlds are on fire and that no one can do anything about it and you're the only one that can handle the very bleak and overall boring barrage of tasks he even stole her mages staff perhaps he thinks it's amusing please I'm in desperate need of help and I think you're the only one that I can turn to I literally just walked through the door I am a stranger to this person and she goes oh by the way one of a young mage boys stole the mage girl's staff there's nothing we can do about it you're our only hope are you kidding me why am I here there is actually a point in these quests where you're tasked with retrieving a dangerous book by someone who used to be part of the mages guild when you report this information you're told to bring the book back to the mages guild instead I chose to give it to the ex member with the idea that I would steal it back thus double the reward I'll be at the gray mare until I finished my work but please don't disturb me and hello you haven't seen my son have you they went off into the forest I did this and instead of having the option to lie my only option was to tell the truth the guy rightfully gets mad but then I give the book back anyway and he's like alright cool here's your recommendation you will retrieve the book immediately what do you uh have you Rick finally I shall see as soon as I said hey yeah I gave the book away then it should have just came that should have been it that should have been the end of the quest line you know real Oh to save or something or give me the option to lie in which case you'd have to have some sort of lying personality system like fallout it really is a shame because the mages guild is set up to be something really exciting it could have been a veritable Harry Potter experience within a game and instead it squandered its own design by making the players do something that the local Squire with zero magical experience could do by the end of the day but at any rate after getting the approval of each sect you make your way off to the wizard 101 campus and get told that you have to purchase a wand at Ollivanders so that you too can be a real wizard this could have again been a unique and fun experience by choosing which kind of wood you wanted for your staff maybe even to the degree of being quizzed about your motives and aspirations as an up-and-coming mage in the guild which then affects your staffs properties the quest giver even tells you that you have to choose carefully like you're going to be presented several options from either wood giver instead the game just blows it again because after you're done fighting through the harsh wasteland of mud crabs and Timberwolves you're greeted with the friendly faces of about 400 necromancer's in a cave after mowing your way through the Zul army you get the very last chunk of balls wood from this glowstick infused coffin and then you skip back to the chamber of sages so that the old man there can tell you that those Punk necromancer kids are over the line then you get to answer a few questions about what you want your staff to be like and this guy carves a different smiley face into it depending on which route you want to take your staff will give you power over ice I think the thing that really sets me off about the major scale in this game is how patronizing it seems to be and if the way I interpreted the quests was done intentionally then I definitely have to give bethesda credit here for evoking this kind of response from me but every early-to-mid mission feels like you're nothing but an errand boy in this guild from gaining entry to the first few quests everything is set up in a way where you feel like you're someone who has an internship at the big time office I think it's honestly how important everything is presented to you as it always seems like only you can take care of the problem your second quest after getting your staff is a full-fledged member of the mages guild involves you being lied to by the council and using your ignorant to extract information from a vampire account we will continue to monitor the situation but I assure you we will make no further attempts to mislead you then you're rewarded for your efforts with an advancement in rank oh we're sorry we lied to you about the dangerous situation we put you in but here's a nice treat for being such a good boy also I'm pretty sure you could use a break after all that scary business so we're gonna send you off to these ruins so you can help it's absurdly hard to tell whether or not the writers of these quests wanted them to seem so disingenuous to the player but it's all I felt when I was pushing through them questing in the mages guild from this point forward tends to drag on and on you're always at odds with the necromancer threat doing your best to gain information and thwart them there are a few quests that almost break from this formula such as retrieving an artifact from the alien ruins but even that falls flat in terms of unique fun it just seems so unbelievably stupid that none of these experienced members can figure out the most mind-boggling least simple tasks this one with the runes involves you translating for ancient inscriptions with a journal and then using four different spells from a chest all of which are on site in the ruins these majors are sitting here trying to shove the triangle blocks for the square holes and wondering why it's not working it's magical we know that much best to play it safe no complex magic stick to basic spells with single effect what a waste of my talents don't get me wrong when you do finally manage to somehow solve the dark souls of puzzle rooms you get to explore the ruins filled with undead and traps as your reward I have to admit I actually did enjoy the trap portion of the dungeon but boy am I tired of underground basements packed with undead you continue through several layers of go here report back quests all of which tend to have some sort of cave like exploration it's probably my biggest gripe with how these quests are structured it's as if Bethesda decided alright boys necromancer's will be the enemy where did necromancer's reside caves boom vampire cave demon game No as I kept advancing through the ranks I realized another issue I had with the story of the mages guild it wasn't just the caves flourishing I was being sent on it was the way the mages guild and council are painted time and time again these people who are supposed to be some of the most wisest and intelligent citizens of Cyrodiil are constantly surprised tricked and baffled by some of the silliest or most predictable events I initially felt like they were being disingenuous but as I progressed I felt like they were just plain naive I think the second to last quest perfectly encapsulates how simple everything is in this guild I swing good with axe you want near door or far away I do good range magic spell you want right here Oh way over there okay but that puts me farther away from the group there's about as much complexity to these choices as deciding to drink when you're thirsty I know I'm reading too much into a quest line but I really feel like this stuff could have played out better finally you're tasked with taking on the HNIC that's head necromancer in charge this part is actually pretty cool because the old Archmage actually gives himself the suck so that you can resist the wily charms of the hottest necromancer in serie dill you will be impervious to his attempts to enroll you I think if that guy knew how easy it was to get the Archmage to sacrifice himself like that he'd have sent in an undercover guy a long time ago I mean realistically I went from apprenticed Archmage in about a week or so but either way you sprint through the final cave and fight the most underwhelming hooded boy you've ever seen then you trek back out and forget to take your gray fox mask off you're the gray fox Oh mate and think of that auto-saves save before you travel I will say that the end reward to doing all this stuff is actually pretty cool because you get to design your own spells and the Archmage's quarters I finally got to design my 65 man a restoration spell so that I can wipe out my mana bar every time I heal once and there you have it a proper Archmage for the mages guild I hold the key and I will die offending it my romp through Oblivion's guild system concluded with the one that I thought that I was going to like the least the fighters guild on the first half to three quarters of this guilds quest give you about the same motivation and feeling of depth as Skyrim's radian quest system it's only redeeming quality during these beginning quests is the somewhat humorous scenarios that come up every here and there I hate my life like helping a woman protect her pet rats even though it sounded like the rats were the problem or helping this Melvin protect his chastity perhaps I should speak with mother first a lot of the characters you encounter are the saving grace of this guild oh my I persist you but the actual contract objectives feel about as interesting as Preston Garvey's Homestead Safari good to see you're working hard another settlement has been work that they need our help over all the fighters guild tends to take all the basic constructs of the game and enhance them in a more complex but overall less fulfilling way it has what I like to call advanced caves ie caves with more traps and winding corridors these were interesting for about three minutes but I actually felt like they belong more in the Thieves Guild quest line also they didn't have a ton of variants and made me feel like I was navigating a discount sense fortress most of the time beyond advanced caves the fighters guild also likes to make you do some advanced exploration advanced exploration consists of normal exploration but with the addition of an NPC to slowly lead you through Cyrodiil as your tour guide because if there's one thing that every game needs its unskipable escort missions and the fighters guild makes good on that endeavor fine Oblivion's behalf all that being said my interest did begin to perk up a bit when it was time to start doing something about the Blackwood company the rival mercenaries were renowned for converting the fighters guild members and stealing their contracts as well as having the reputation to do anything to complete a contract in one of them you're sent off to a mine to figure out what's become of the guild masters son who was sent in to clear the mine of trolls when you arrive you're met with body after body of the fighters guild members and one Blackwood company members body it's a chilling scene and it's actually one of the few caves that I do have to give credit to in terms of design you see if you're not paying attention to the map your instinct is to head deeper and deeper in a straight line thus discovering more corpses along the way when you hit the dead end you realize there's a hairpin turn that's super easy to miss as you walk by it which leads to the rest of the cave it's a quest I really enjoyed a lot and the ending of it has you thumbing through a journal that details the invasion of the rival guild and they're slaying of nearly all the fighters guild members cold and dying the son of the guild master writes his final words as the trolls close in on his location I love this narrative and it made me wish for more interesting quests like it I'd have actually really loved the choice between these two rival factions on one side you have the bright and virtuous mercenaries who try to stay on the up-and-up and on the other hand you have the insidious and seedy ones who are willing to get their hands dirty that good versus evil narrative might have actually been really fun and I think this kind of decision-making is something that oblivion really lacks in pretty much all of its quest lines there never really is a good or evil choice it's just one of the other and you follow it without question either way when you finally become a champion of the fighters guild outranking your old bosses in the process you're called upon to end the Blackwood company once and for all these are probably my second favorite quests in the game right behind the Dark Brotherhood they actually almost make up for all the filler in the fighters guild you're tasked with the infiltration of the Blackwood company to see how they operate upon being initiated you're told to drink the sap of a history that has been smuggled from Marwin you're told that all company members drink this SAP before missions so you drink it and come to consciousness at a small village where goblins have over ran everything you begin slaying the goblins which die in one hit you're then told to check all the houses for more that are hiding after clearing the village you pass out again and wake up in your ex guild mates house you're then told to go check the village just in case and surprise surprise you've brutally murdered the entire village more or less it's an awesomely chilling story that paints the Blackwood members as either sinister addicts or naively manipulated mercs who are just happy with any sort of work no the entire town I realize you must be disgusted with yourself walking up to the company's guild hall for the final confrontation feels perfect and your quest for vengeance and justice makes fighting feel fueled with a very palpable excitement after mowing down member after member and these two Native Americans you then jammed the machine that keeps the history alive with large pipes which destroys the machinery for a game with very few cinematics this definitely felt like a cutscene it was a spectacular ending to the guild which made me wish for more it I know I rag down the fighters field pretty hard at the beginning but can you blame me it's really a case of less is more for me because a huge chunk of the Guild's quest felt like filler on one hand there were some pretty humorous moments to fill in the gaps but on the other those moments were sandwiched between caves and dungeons and mass I was just getting used to being retired you can see how good my painting is getting with the guilds out of the way I felt pretty obligated to finish the main storyline at this point so your first order of business is recovering the amulet of Kings in order to do that you need information about the cult that's pitted against you which involves you recovering books you're then taken on a tour of the sewers by my hero Boris I'm not sure why this game seems to have been created with the idea that people love getting the runaround in mazes but it's definitely a trend that I've taken issue with immensely anyways the books give you info on where your next clue lies and you follow the breadcrumb trail to a cave full of cultists you present yourself as a new initiative follow their orders or don't and mow them all down I chose both then you get another book but this one's cooler you bring the book back to Martin who gets the work deciphering it in the meantime you're sent to deal with some spies after Martin decipher is part of the book he tells you that you need to bring back a Daedric artifact this was actually a pretty interesting way to handle a quest because it's literally asking you for any Daedric artifact the quest points you to where you could find one but if you wanted to you could walk to any shrine around the map extract its artifact and bring it back to Martin after this it's everyone's favorite time again oblivion gate closing time you're to lead the broom atone guard through the gate that's opened outside their City at least if you want to take 30 minutes to fight everything you can lead them through it if you want to be a total badass you can run through the whole thing in 4 minutes while bird waits through lava outside the main quest then splits into two different quests that need to be completed one consists of bringing Martin ancient armor derived from a divine and the other is rallying the other cities into pensive Bruma the armored one is the equivalent of ordering a coke and getting a Pepsi with glass shards in it instead of ice cubes I think if I had done the main questline from the beginning I wouldn't have minded it as much but my god these undead catacombs at least the whole dead blades thing was pretty neat Oh anyways remember when I said you had to do the whole Oblivion gate thing eight more times well that's what the other quest is or at least the biggest chunk of them are involved in it it's optional but I decided to do it just to show how tedious they are and because apparently I hate myself with an open oblivion gate I cannot spare any soldiers I don't have any men to spare I cannot spare any soldiers I need all my soldiers here with an abyss congrat bravo lair winch Aten hole coral safe for the moment i will likewise help you I can now gladly send a rumor I hate this quest it's boring it's monotonous it's the same thing over and over again with a new coat of red paint each time after every city is done letting you perform the entirety of their defense for them they agree to lend you men for the big showdown which let's be honest you just closed seven gates by yourself do you really need these men basically they make the big oblivion gate a lot more manageable after you go get the Welkin stone in the goblins vs. zombies cave you deliver it to Martin and he informs you that the last piece of the puzzle is going to stem from allowing the cultists to open the biggest and beefiest o gate this side of Cyrodiil this is one of the only times that I really wish the game was created more recently this whole fight is really cool to look at don't get me wrong it's a bit underwhelming combat wise but that's the same as always but watching different oblivion gates pop-up followed by this massive one is a really awesome sight this is the only time to quest in the game making it particularly stressful when doing it the yeah the correct way but after you get over the tremendous siege engine barreling towards the gates entrance at a blistering pace it may surprise you to find out that this is in fact another oblivion gate does this look familiar that's because I'm replaying old footage now I'm kidding this gate has the same damn Tower I've climbed like eight times now after grabbing the biggest sigil stone you defeat the biggest siege engine in the biggest gate and then you move on to paradise which is pretty damn cool the change in scenery is a welcomed one and it's some of the more interesting level layout and voice acting in the game barring the Shivering Isles I actually had a lot of fun with the caves here and the contrast between paradises exterior and its inner workings filled with tortured souls is very enjoyable you finally meet the man in charge and after hearing about his motives you begin your fight it isn't anything super epic or grandiose but the before and after makes up for it as the paradise that man car Cameron built crumbles with his body upon your return you begin the last leg of your journey to light the dragon fires and prevent mehrunes dagon from invading Tamriel once and for all this plan is immediately halted when he comes through anyways along with this Hell Army this is a really cool part of the game that ushered in its finale watching the sky go read over the Imperial City and Daedra pouring into it is a pretty imposing sight I do have to take a bit of issue with the convenience of the biggest demon boy crossing over of literally minutes before the dragon fires are lit but it is what it is once you finally battle your way through the city you take Martin Septim to the temple of the one where he crushes the amulet of Kings which turns them into a big beef and light dragon he then fights mehrunes dagon while you kind of hang out and look at them it's an underwhelming finish in terms of gameplay but it's a cool battle to watch with an ending that leaves Mehrunes obliterated and martin petrified as a monument to a sacrifice you're hailed is the champion of Cyrodiil and given a custom-made armor set to commemorate your deeds i actually felt a little swell of pride at this honorific it's odd because I've done a lot of complaining about the amount of Sammy stuff that's in this game which encompasses the main questline as well but I feel like after drudging through all those hell escapes and saving everyone's asses multiple times that recognition is pretty welcome it isn't necessarily the greatest exaltation but it could have just as easily been a you did it good job and you walking away like nothing ever happened I initially started the early concept of this video as a skyrim versus oblivion comparison but as I collected the massive amount of footage from oblivion I realized that trying to cut down my exact impressions and feelings into a video that didn't take up an hour and a half wouldn't be a fair assessment I initially stopped my Dark Brotherhood progression after killing the other family members and I stopped the fighters guild quests line after becoming a defender just to save time and make a hasty comparison between the guilds in each game and if I had done that I would have missed out on some of my favorite quests in the end our game overall I would say that oblivion is a game worth visiting or revisiting is it as good as I remember it being honestly it isn't there were a lot of times when it was much better than I remembered it being but most of the time it was worse it doesn't mean it's not worth playing but while it hasn't aged as horribly as some people might say it definitely has aged when compared to newer games from this decade a lot of quests maps and characters are very lazy copy and pasted and obviously filler the training system is a bit fickle and NPC banter is just plain odd I don't have time I don't have time for you hello welcome to Castle Carl the Oblivion gate system as a whole is this tremendous waste of potential a lot of tasks are tedious and boring and overall and fulfilling but in the end it's still an Elder Scrolls game and I still kind of solid 50 hours out of it while doing this review did I want to stop after 30 I'd be lying if I said no but I'm still fond of this game in the end and I'll always appreciate it for what it is thanks for watching my 45 minute rant about an 11 year old game as with all my videos this one took way too long to make and matches no other content on the channel I'll likely be moving on to another bugs and glitches video next like my Sid Meier's Civilization 1 until then I'll be streaming over on Twitch semi occasionally I'll be going on vacation until mid-june thanks again [Laughter]

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 5,038,808

Rating: 4.8523173 out of 5

Keywords: The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion, Analysis, Breakdown, Review, Caves, Evaluation, Main quest, Arena, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Black Hand, Fighters Guild, These tags always make me wonder if anyone can even see them, Gray Fox, Lucien Lachance, Gates, Walkthrough, I can't believe Wes Johnson voiced all these people, What a guy

Id: eapSJjo-XmQ

Length: 45min 53sec (2753 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018